This music has many names. Jazz is creative music and it's changed fast in its short history.

Bear in mind that the most influential musicians-such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis-cannot be confined to a single period. And that each style continued to be enjoyed, and to develop and evolve, long after its period of greatest influence. You can still hear all this music being played today.

1890-1920	Traditional jazz or trad jazz (so called during the early jazz revival of the 1950s-1960s), or sometimes Dixieland or New Orleans music. Jazz emerges from the bars and dancehalls of New Orleans, drawing on ragtime and the city's brass band music to create exciting group improvisation.
	Performers: Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet.
1920-1930	In the big cities, innovative bandleaders merge popular songs and show tunes with the inventiveness of jazz, and a sophisticated new music begins to emerge.
	Performers: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, Fletcher Henderson.
1930-1940	Big band or swing music. Alongside the earlier bandleaders, dance orchestras employ great jazz soloists, and the big bands provide a melting pot for new musical ideas.
	Performers: Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald.
1940-1950	The harmonic and rhythmic revolution of bebop or modern jazz. Virtuosic musicians develop a new musical vocabulary: playing harder and faster, advancing the harmony, fracturing the rhythm.
	Performers: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Thelonious Monk.
1950-1960	Driving post-bop or hard bop has a tougher edge, while modal jazz thins out the demanding harmonies of bebop, and the cool school creates a more laid back music. Great arrangers and composers bring third stream jazz to the concert hall, and there are the first stirrings of entirely free improvisation, without pre-arranged form or structure.
	Performers: Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Stan Kenton, Modern Jazz Quartet, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus.
1960-1980	Musical styles fragment and cross-pollinate. Free jazz goes further out; cool jazz becomes more listener friendly. Rock music and electric instruments make their presence felt, with jazz-rock, jazz-funk or fusion music. Brazilian, Caribbean and Asian sounds, and in the UK, South African Township music start to have an influence, and a distinctive European jazz sound emerges.
	Performers: John Coltrane, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Miles Davis, The Brotherhood of Breath, Carla Bley, Weather Report, Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin, ECM Records.
1980-present	Jazz musicians mine the rich vein of the music's history, and incorporate funk, hip-hop, electronica and contemporary concert music. While the radio stations play smooth jazz and conservatives insist on things being done their way, imaginative players find new things in old music and the underground keeps throwing up innovations. The music can be fresh and funky, or cool and cerebral-jazz remains the sound of surprise.
	Performers: Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Michael Brecker, Django Bates and Loose Tubes, The Yellowjackets, Courtney Pine, The M-Base Collective, The F-ire Collective, Dune Records.